Growing things – Page 4 – the story of Casa Azul

The fruits of our labours

May 31, 2015 richard Comments 2 comments

Although the fields round here are still crammed with spring flowers, summer is just around the corner. We had a downpour in the first week of May but since then it has been unrelenting sun with most days peaking at over 30 degrees. But never mind summer we also have half an eye on Autumn and the coming harvest.

The cherries are the first to arrive and have in fact already done so. We bought a young cherry tree a few years ago and it has always been a bit odd and remained very small but it has produced its first cherry. And second cherry. But that was it! Meanwhile our old tree is full of little gems which should be ready very soon. Around the time we bought the cherry tree we also got an apricot tree. Unlike the cherry, this tree is magnificent. Last year it produced its first fruit but none stayed the distance. This year we have two. Lets hope they will hang on and grow to maturity. Our garden is full of plum trees and fingers crossed it will be another good year for these fruit of many hues. Also it looks like a good year for the walnuts and the apples but we will not have a single pear. We also have a number of peach trees. They start off with loads of fruit but they either fall off too soon or if they ripen they are full of worms and/or are inedible. It’s strange how these things work out. The first of the soft fruit, the raspberries, are also ready but I’ll leave Jackie to fill you in on veg patch news next time.

Cherry number 1 and first of the yellow plums

At the moment, whenever we walk through the garden or indeed wander the village, with the gentlest of breezes we are engulfed in snowdrifts of confetti. The olive trees are now in flower and after last year’s disaster we are hoping for a good crop this time around.

On to another type of harvest. I can’t believe two years after we killed the pigs they keep on giving. Last week I found a liver at the bottom of the chest freezer and that means pâté. According to supermarket practice the liver may have been well beyond its sell-by-date but I can assure you the pâté was delicious. I’ve also killed this year’s first crop of roasties and so made some more pâté out of the chicken livers. Much smoother than the pig liver pâté but just as delicious.

pig liver and chicken liver pate — pig liver and chicken liver pâté

Soon we will be getting to the end of the spring flowers but the orchids keep on coming. Here are a few more found within metres of our house.

Broad leaved Helleborine and the Bug Orchid

The orchid on the left is a hypochromatic form of the woodcock orchid (normal one seen on the right). This is a genetic abnormality and there is much discussion in the orchid world about why it happens!

More controversy! The flower on the right is a Mirror Orchid. We thought the one on the left was also a Mirror Orchid but recently it has been identified as a species in its own right – the Iberian Ophrys. It is quite rare and only found in Portugal and some parts of Spain.

And our final orchid is Ophrys Lutea. Very pretty.

And finally a photo of Jussi – sporting her socks in an attempt to stop her licking her paws!

The sun has got his hat on

May 19, 2015 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

The rain has decided to have a holiday and it’s been sun, sun, sun. This means mornings are spent watering the veg patch and evenings watering the garden. The well is still surprisingly full but with no rain forecast for the next ten days that’ll soon disappear.

I have finally discovered what has survived the relentless winter frosts. A week or two ago I would have said everything except the bougainvillea but even that now has new shoots. However, along with some of the lavender that is looking very sorry for itself, I fear we’re going to have to make some replacements. But overall I’m pleased that we didn’t really lose anything, even the lily in the pond has lots of leaves.

Frost-wise all survived in the veg patch too, even the runner beans that lost their first leaves are now climbing their poles. Another plant to survive the frosts are the lettuce. I bought a collection of them for one euro and they do very well. They are a fantastic cut-and-come-again plant, I can cut one every day and they’ll have grown back in no time.

But all is not well. One of the first years here I lost a number of brassicas but then boasted in this post from last year that I hadn’t lost any because I’d placed plastic collars around each one. Well, I did that again this year but alas I have already lost quite a few. One day the plants are all perky and the next one will look very droopy. Removing the collar you can see ants have made a nest under the plant although I don’t think it’s the ants themselves which are attacking the plant. There are moths that lay eggs around the base of the plant, which is what the collar is meant to prevent, but ants help them, like they do the aphids, because they eat their larvae, which in turn eat the plant. Something like that. I’ve tried to clear the stems of any bugs but they never look very good again. Very annoying.

The asparagus is enormous, and we have two beds of it. I wish I’d known how large they grow although in the intense summer heat they provide some welcome shelter. I have had to severely trim them all, it was impossible to walk past them.

Richard has been away and was due back yesterday but a cancelled flight means he’s back a day later. He has two jobs waiting for him: strimming and killing. The garden is becoming like the wild meadow from the previous post, sort of shabby chic with all the flowers, charmingly scruffy (actually a bit of a mess!)

The dogs will be pleased to see Richard but the roasties are making the most of the delay. Fat and lazy, they waddle around on huge legs, a far cry from their baby selves. There is one cock among them who has started a very pitiful crowing – he’ll be the first for the chop!

Finally, continuing with the floral theme, I have been busy doing inside jobs once it gets too hot outside. I have made some more soap with marigold flowers and, my favourite, some elderflower cordial. I’ve discovered another old house in the village with a large elder tree in the courtyard that catches the morning sun. How I’ve missed them both I don’t know. The flowers smell wonderful and the cordial is really the taste of summer. Oh, and I’ve made some strawberry ice cream too, we already have a bumper crop!

Time to sit in the garden with a glass of cordial topped up with fizzy water to enjoy the flowers (and ignore the weeds). Cheers!

Holes, voles and poles

April 26, 2015 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

It’s raining. So much for spending all day in the garden, let’s hope the little couve galega plugs will be all right until later. It’s been a busy few weeks in the horta, however, and things are shooting up everywhere.

Holes have started appearing in both the garden and veg patch. Big holes and lots of little holes. First of all, I noticed very tiny holes at the base of all the broad bean flowers, every single one was affected but not a bug in sight. Hmm. Off to the computer to find the answer: bumble bees. Apparently, they’re too fat and hairy to get into the flowers for the nectar so they bite into the base and get it from there. Which means the ants and other creatures use the the holes as well and the flowers have less chance of being pollinated. These flowers are amongst the first to appear which is why a bee-line (hee hee) is made straight for them but it will be less of a problem once there are others to tempt them away. We do have plenty of pods now so no harm done really but certainly a much smaller crop than otherwise.

Other holes have been appearing in the ground. We thought it was mice first of all, we seem to have even more than usual scurrying around, and they love the straw in the potting shed. But mice don’t make holes in the ground. Off to the computer to find the answer: voles. Initially, I was relieved, voles won’t come inside the house and make themselves at home. But it seems that they are far more destructive than mice in the veg patch, devouring more things. Hmm. With the barn owls around the last thing we want to do is use poison so we set up loads of traps around the holes, covered with upturned plant pots. Nada. We have caught plenty of mice and shrews in the boiler room but not a single vole has been caught in the garden. Nature though has a way of sorting things out. We have spotted a large ladder snake plus, this morning, diving under the holes in the olive tree, a weasel. Both of these eat small mammals. Whether they are responsible for the bigger holes (pictured) we don’t know. And I’m not complaining that a cat has been coming in at night, they’ll put the voles off too. Not to mention the mongeese which we know lurk in the undergrowth.

In anticipation of runner beans, climbing courgettes, melons, cucumbers, aubergines and of course tomatoes the poles are going up in the beds. It looks like an assault course at the moment. They’re mainly eucalyptus poles so they smell nice as well as being straight and sturdy!

What are we eating now? The leeks are finished and purple sprouting broccoli just gone so only the onions at the mo, and the first of the broad beans. We still have potatoes from last year though (and the frozen garlic which turned out to be a great success) but that’s it. It’s the only time of the year when there is such a dearth of crops, no wonder it’s called the hungry gap. Meanwhile, I’m not alone while gardening, there’s often a couple of supporters:

Rejuvenation

April 10, 2015 richard Comments 2 comments

Spring is the time for rejuvenation. The trees are full of blossom, bushes are sprouting and the grass just grows, grows and grows. It’s also the time for some man-made rejuvenation and now is the turn of the polytunnel.
Here it is just finished in January 2011

Although we have replaced the plastic once before, four years have taken their toll:

So time for repairs

and now, good as new

To continue the thread of our local orchids, the Early Purples and the Giant Orchids have all but disappeared to be replaced by the Naked Man Orchid and more recently quite a few Sword-Leaved Helleborines have appeared.

The colour purple

March 22, 2015 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

From the veg patch we have the first of the purple sprouting broccoli joining the asparagus:

In the countryside the early purple orchids (orchis mascula) are out and, if you look in the dappled light along walkways, tiny dog-violets (viola riviniana) are hiding:

Win some, lose some

March 16, 2015 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

We have a friend who sometimes says on her Facebook page that she has lost a day. Well, for me I lost a whole month. I mean, where did February go? January seemed endless and yet here we are mid-March. The horta, however, has not weeded or pruned itself so I must have done something down there! Richard recently strimmed everywhere and it does look so much better, with lots of cleared, empty beds waiting to be filled.

But, as always in the gardening world, it’s win some, lose some. I dug up the horseradish recently. It has never done really well, and no fear of it spreading, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been too surprised to discover that the roots had gone rotten. It was just beginning to sprout but there was nothing edible. It seems to be one of the easiest plants to grow but, unlike most of the plants I shove in the ground, it wasn’t happy. There is a slight dip in the ground where it was planted and despite the good drainage perhaps it just got too much water. Ah well. I did manage to save a couple of small roots that looked okay and have put them elsewhere. We’ll see.

So on a more positive note the asparagus is shooting up, a mixture of great stocky stalks and thin lanky stems, all very tasty though. Plus, although I have always known that broccoli (calabrese) gives out extra shoots having had the main stalk cut, I hadn’t realised how long they do this for, and just how big the off-shoots become. We have been eating from plants put in the garden from the summer, a real cut-and-grow-again veg.

Meanwhile the temperatures are hitting the high 20s, during the day of course. But those lovely clear skies are still giving us frosts at night, and more than just ground frost. This has meant every evening all the seedlings have to be put away at night, not a small task now that most things have germinated and been potted on. We bought one set of plugs, some beans, and I chose to leave those out. Well, the outer leaves have been frost bitten, I’m just hoping they’ll be okay. Then of course every morning out everything comes again. There’s something very exciting about this time of the year though, all those little seedlings bursting through the soil. I look at a tiny purple sprouting broccoli and glance over at the four sown last year, over a metre tall and almost ready to eat, and am always amazed.

Oh and we have also bought some more ‘roasties’ and 4 more ducklings, but they’re another story…

Plant of the year award 2014

January 8, 2015 Jackie Comments 3 comments

Mr Jack Frost has been nipping at our noses for long enough. Pretty the mornings may be but the constant sub-zero temperatures are giving many of the plants a hard time. The bougainvillea, flowering not so long ago, has black, shrivelled leaves. The lavender tips are drooping. The cactus plants don’t seem to be the right colour any more. So enough, no more! (I’ve just glanced at the weather forecast, looks like he’ll be around for a tad longer).

The chickens seem nonplussed, giving us 3 or 4 eggs a day. Huddled together in their hut at night their feathers keep them snug, it’s the high temperatures they dislike. Topping up their feed and cracking open their water leaves my fingers numb. The other day I realised I’d left my wellies outside the front door all night, frozen feet in an instant!

There is always a silver lining. Cloudless days have also meant lunch outside, walks on the beach and gardening in the sunshine.

Which has got me thinking about the plant of the year award (I know many of you are waiting with baited breath 🙂 !) The garlic call out to be nominated. This year, or rather last year, I didn’t buy any new bulbs but planted the ones which were beginning to sprout from those pulled up early summer. I’d planted loads, some were hung up to dry and others (I must remember) were frozen. We’ll be having them for some time yet. So 78 of the 80 planted are well up and good candidates they certainly are but I’d already chosen leeks for 2012, (you can find out why here) and I didn’t want another member of the alium family.

The buttercup squash also wanted the award, we have three left from a good crop, doing well despite the wet weather 2014 threw at us. But as I was pruning the redcurrants, black currants and gooseberries (good with mackerel!) I was reminded of how well they all did over the summer. The raspberries, now either cut down or tied up depending if autumn or summer varieties, also did well. They have spread and given us extra beds for free. The strawberries were large and luscious. We still have bags of most of them in the freezer (I must remember) including blackberries. So the award goes to the soft fruit. You need a little patience but once established it’s only a touch of pruning and mulching to keep them going. And what is nicer than eating raspberries straight from the bush?

I think the sloes are also included in this category (I know blackthorn is a member of the plum family but it’s a shrub rather than a tree) so will toast the fruit with a glass of our pink sloe gin. Cheers!

It’s the weather, stupid

September 18, 2014 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

We are often asked, What’s the summer / winter like? Our answer is always, It varies from one year to the next. We have just passed our five year mark and it remains true: the seasons have been different every year. However, there has been one constant: September. A few off days maybe but in general hot and sunny, perfect for the seaside or river beach. But now even September has let us down. We drove off at the start of the month in rain (a short sojourn in Spain) and for the 5 days we’ve been back it’s rained and rained. Sometimes a downpour is followed by blue skies, other times there’s relentless greyness and drizzle. Ho hum. The grass is green, there are field mushrooms galore and the fat hairy one is enjoying the puddles again. There’s a distinct smell of autumn in the air, and we’ve not seen one plume of smoke from forest fires over the whole of the summer, a first for us.

And the veg patch? Well, September is pepper month for us. This year I planted 5 different types, safe in the knowledge they’ll do well come late summer. We did have, before the hols, some large green, and even red, bell peppers which were wonderful. They were large enough to stuff (the red ones with cubes of potatoes and feta in pesto sauce, mmm). We also had a couple of dishes of some new types. Visitors to Spain may well be familiar with a popular dish: pimientos de Padrón. They’re smallish green peppers which taste wonderful fried in smoking olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt. However, their fame rests on the fact that occasionally one is fiery hot – and you can never tell which one is going to explode in your mouth! I was really chuffed with those.

The others, alas, are suffering from the rain. There’s another variety of sweet red peppers, some hungarian wax peppers and some fiery red hot chillies. I’m hoping as I type this, and listen to the heavy raindrops on the vine leaves outside the study window, the weather forecast holds true and there are some sunny days ahead. That means we’ll have some more peppers and I can make some roasted chilli oil.

Meanwhile, the Cheeky Charlie saga still continues! We came back from (sunnier) Spain to discover the nice Kiwi couple who looked after our house and animals had caught him (her) and put him with the 4 new hens. Unfortunately, we got to see first hand how horrid chooks are to newcomers. Poor old Charlie was stood on and his neck, always featherless, was bled from being pecked. (It’s dog eat dog in the chicken world, as Richard would say). So I put him back in the old pig pen and made a fine hideaway in the field to encourage him to stay and not jump out and into the brambles. This did not work. He wasn’t interested in the brambles anymore, he wanted to be out and about.

So right now he’s in the third, spare hen field, next to both sets of hens for company but protected from them. He still jumps out at night into the 4 hens patch (while, they’re tucked away) but he seems ‘happy’ in his new field which has plenty of brambles growing through and plants for coverage. I have no idea why I spend so much time fretting about him when he should have been killed and with his old mates in the freezer. There’s something about his audaciousness and pluck (ha ha) which was lacking in the other ‘roasties’. I’m sure we’ll have Cheeky Charlie chicken casserole one day…

Highs and lows…

June 30, 2014 Jackie Comments 1 comment

…ups and downs, swings and roundabouts. Whatever way you look at it the first of the ‘summer’ months has been erratic: from over 30C and then down to single figures at night, glorious baking hot sunshine (too hot for breakfast outside) and then cold, drizzly days with autumn mists. There are field mushrooms popping up! The well is full! Tomorrow is July and the forecast is 19C and rain! Climate change? Who knows but it’s certainly meant losses and gains in the veg patch.

Starting with the positive it’s been great for the soft fruit. Our red currants, gooseberries, black currants and raspberries have given us bumper crops. The gooseberries, along with the elderflower cordial, were turned into jam and ice cream. The rest have been flash frozen (or are being, the raspberries and black currants are still coming) and then packed into bags for future jellies, jams and cakes.

I’m sure the blueberries tasted nice but only the birds can tell. The plums, that we moaned about last year (not one!), are dripping from the trees. The first of the yellow plum jams have been made, with a dash of vanilla this year, and there’s a weekend of bottling ahead. The cucumbers, sweetcorn and green peppers have been unaffected, and there are plenty of onions and garlic again. This year I decided to have a go at flash freezing the garlic as last years crop lasted well into the spring but then started to sprout. So this year only half are being dried and the rest, as an experiment, are in the freezer.

All sounds tip top. But then the potatoes… in fact they did ok but I chose, perhaps not unreasonably, a warm morning to dig them up. Which then turned into a boiler and I left them out to dry in the sun. The next day many had turned black, we tried to use them up as quickly as possible (freezer is now also full of potato cakes) but alas many were destined for the compost bin having got rotten before we could use them. Well, you learn by your mistakes.

The brassicas loved the rain. Huge great cauliflowers, enormous cabbages and giant calabrese started to appear. But then the leaves got bigger and bigger and, as the song goes, “if I only had a heart”. I peered in through the foliage hoping for a glimpse of something not leaflike – nothing.

Eventually, we did get some cauliflowers and calabrese but really quite small which was so disappointing. Especially as this year I remembered to put plastic collars around the base of them all to keep egg-laying moths away (which worked brilliantly, I didn’t lose a single plant). I’m still hoping that the sprouts, which form later in the year, and the purple sprouting broccoli, which we get next year, will be ok. Not sure how much more patience to have with the cabbages, and I really wanted some of those mammoth lombardy heads like we’ve seen others growing. At least the smaller cauliflower heads were put to good use, as along with some of our beans, courgettes, onions etc there are now 4 jars of piccalilli in the pantry too.

And it seems crazy that July is tomorrow and we haven’t had any toms yet. Last month all the plants were doing well, especially the roma ones sown in January, and by mid June there were loads of green toms. And there are still loads of green toms. Only green. And perhaps most worrying is that many of the new flowers above have fallen off unfertilised. We have both noticed the lack of insects in general this year. In fact, amazingly, the purple sprouting broccoli from early spring came and went without a single, horrid grey aphid in sight. We haven’t put the fly curtains on the doors yet. As for honey bees: nada. The bumble bees are happy with the buddleia and lavender but really very few flying creatures to marvel at and be bothered by. Perhaps when summer really does arrive…

Meanwhile, the countryside is still lovely and green and full of wild flowers. Even the field next door which was sprayed has bounced back with poppies and chicory. So the toms and peppers can wait, there’s plenty of courgettes and chard and beans to keep us going. And it’s perfect walking weather too 🙂

Hooray for May

May 12, 2014 Jackie Comments 0 Comment

Well, hardly a mention of the veg patch and growing things so far this year but rest assured it’s been a busy time sowing, transplanting, mulching, planting, weeding etc etc over the last few months. This morning the first courgette flower was out and that for me is a sign that the growing season has really kicked in and the munching season is not far behind. I’d taken a photo of the beds on the 29 April and already, just over two weeks later, there’s a big difference:

And here you can see how the sweetcorn, chard and sprouts have enjoyed the sunshine:

The asparagus, leeks and purple sprouting broccoli have all gone (plus most of the artichokes) but waiting in the wings now are more brassica (loads of cabbage for some reason, calabrese, cauliflower) plus beans, onions and garlic. The potatoes have pale purple flowers. There’s aubergines, buttercup squash and melons planted too. Oh, and some carrots.

Along with the baby courgettes there are tiny toms appearing (the comfrey fertilizer should be ready for them soon), weeny cucumbers and minuscule peppers. And for dessert they’ll be gooseberries, plums, raspberries and red currants before long:

It’s always a nice time, it’s still sort of green, the heat hasn’t become too oppressive and there’s the excitement of a good crop of nourishing things to eat. I was feeling rather pleased with myself as I looked over the beds today until I saw what a mess the potting shed is but I just can’t face sorting that out now. I’d failed to clear it out at the end of last summer because of a huge wasp nest. They tried loads of times to make a new one this season but I put an end to that.

A little pat on the back for me too as I won a couple of prizes at an agricultural show. Not a good time of the year for showing veg but the lemon cake with borage flowers, and a trio of preserves did well:

So it’s all coming up roses, or rather dandelions, at the mo 🙂

the story of Casa Azul

and a new life in deepest Portugal

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